


Five Times Dorian Didn't Remember John and One Time He Did

by Corrie71



Category: Almost Human
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 11:10:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1742657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corrie71/pseuds/Corrie71





	Five Times Dorian Didn't Remember John and One Time He Did

**1) Janitor**

In the moments after surfacing from the blackness, the unrelenting dark void, he wakes to a comfortingly blank mind. After his circuits come online, he remembers. He is DRN-0167.

And nothing else.

He’s handed a blue uniform and a mop. 

“Time to clean the cubes.” He follows along, docile, content to be given a job, happy to be useful. He scrubs floors, cleans toilets, works in the laundry. His days take on a sameness, a routine. 

One day, as he’s cleaning in the lunchroom, an inmate bounces trash off his forehead, trying to make a basket into the trash can that DRN-0167 is emptying. 

“Three points!” 

The DRN unit looks up, confused, and thinks, “John would never have allowed that.” 

He has only a moment to consider “Who is John?” before he collapses under the onslaught of trash heaped on him and everything goes comfortably dark and blank again.

 

**2) Waiter**

When the DRN-0167 next wakes, he’s handed a tray and instructed to clear dishes off the tables. He does so calmly, happily. The upscale restaurant is much cleaner and quieter than the cubes. He clears tables efficiently and charges quietly in the kitchen each night.

Until the night the restaurant hosts a rocking oldies night. 

And Dorian can’t stop singing Elton John songs and remembering a handsome man with the middle name Reginald.

The puzzled restaurant manager called the company that rented out the DRN units and, with a single touch of a slender, silver wand, DRN-0167 falls silent again.

 

**3) Ticket Collector**

The next time that DRN-0167 wakes, he’s instructed to sit in a ticket booth, collecting tickets as patrons stream past into the museum. He does so, quietly, efficiently, until a little boy named Victor comes with his mother to see the stars at the observatory. The little boy puts an animatronic giraffe on the counter and taps its head. As it canters past, the DRN unit remembers a man named John and helping to rescue Victor’s mother.

When he mentions it, she complains to the manager and soon after the slender silver wand brushes the DRN’s neck and he falls silent and still once again.

 

**4) Store clerk**

The fourth time that DRN-0167 is awoken, he is warned that this time is his last and final chance. He will be sold for scrap if he doesn’t manage to make this job work. He’s asked to stock shelves at a local grocery store, an easy job for someone like him. He takes to making creative displays and all goes well for several months. 

Until the ramen goes on sale. DRN-0167 remembers watching a dark-haired man eat noodles and somehow tricking him into eating a live slug. He smiles at the memory, knowing that this handsome man was important to him somehow.

And then he remembers their kiss…

He walks out into the night, looking for the police precinct that he used to call home. 

He only makes it a few blocks before they arrive, with their slender, silver wands again.

 

**5) NASA**

He wakes again to discover that he’s been sold. He’s in a training class, being taught how to repair vehicles for the suborbital space station, before being launched into space. The work is simple, so he spends most of his time in his training class trying to access the hidden, encrypted files he’s found concealed in his memory banks.

DRN-0167 is not surprised when the password is John. 

He falls to his knees as he remembers laughing with John, dancing with him, the look on his face as Dorian pleasured him, the way their bodies slapped together in a haze of pleasure, finding a rhythm all their own. 

He sees John’s face, streaming with tears, as a woman named Maldonado tells them that Dorian will be decommissioned. Watches as John throws his badge at her. Remembers his last glimpse of John’s forest green eyes as everything went dark.

He hears John say again, “I will remember you, Dorian. You’re going to a better place.”

Well, John had been rather wrong about that, hadn’t he?

The only questions that remained for Dorian was, Where was John now?

 

 

**+1) Remember…**

Dorian waited until the other NASA MXs and DRNs and synthetics were safely ensconced in their charging chambers before setting out across the city. He stopped at John’s apartment but knew, even before the woman opened the door, that John didn’t live there any more.

As he walked to the only other location he could think of to look for John, he searched the public news archives, afraid he’d find a death notice or a virtual headstone bearing the name “John Reginald Kennex” but there was nothing. And Dorian was afraid to hope.

He crept down the stairs to Rudy’s workshop, and found the mad inventor there, playing with one of his endless experiments. 

“Dorian.” Rudy hugged him close. “I knew you’d come.”

“Rudy, where’s John?”

“Let me take you to him.” Rudy gathered a temporary charger for Dorian and got them quickly into his car. “He tried everything to keep you. Went through court cases to try to buy you from them. But…he never won.”

Rudy drove them to the Mexican border and then for another hour, until the sun rose and sparkled over the undulating waves. They stopped in front of a small, yellow beach shack. A man, dressed casually in black pants and a loose Hawaiian shirt, opened the shutters on the bar, his back to them. Silver shot through his dark hair and, as he got closer, Dorian saw that his deep tan made his eyes glow green.

And Dorian finally has the answer for who John is. 

His partner. His human partner. 

And the absolute love of his life. 

He walks up to the beach hut, Rudy trailing along behind, and waits as John stocks the bar. When he turns, he gasps and smiles.

Dorian extends his hand to him and says, “Hi, I’m Dorian.”


End file.
